Growing up Rapture
by Arwyn Atreides
Summary: In a dark city, children must survive. Making their way through the chaos and violence. To their doom? To freedom? Dark days have come. But some remember the beginning.


"I remember the beginning…

It feels like a hundred years ago but I remember it. You might remember it too. A time before all of the blood and fear. A time before all of the monsters prowling in the dark. When adults were not twisted. When children were innocent.

We were all so happy. It was all so perfect. We were promised perfection. Everyone thought that life was perfect but Papa said they were making God angry. No one listened. I think… Papa was the only one who still believed in God. Papa made me believe too but Mama told me never to tell, because God wasn't supposed to be able to be real here. In Rapture we weren't supposed to have God. It was just an imaginary friend here, is what Mama said, and we left it behind, on the surface. When I told Papa what Mama told me, he said that God was everywhere, we were all just trying to hide down here. But still, Papa didn't talk about God outside our home. He said that this was not so bad, though. Where Mama and Papa were from it was really bad. Down here it wasn't so bad…before. Before this all started. Before 'we spit in God's eye.'

I remember when Papa said that. He screamed it when they were taking him away. Papa said we were all going to pay. Papa said we were all in 'the third city.' Papa said 'The other two burned what do you think is going to happen here! We spit in God's eye and we're all sitting in a puddle of His spit! God's gonna drown us! God's gonna part His spit, look at us and he's gonna spit again and obliterate us!' Papa begged Mama to take me back to where they came from. But Mama loved our home and she never wanted to leave. So we stayed.

Papa was taken away. Mama didn't tell me where he was. I didn't know if I would ever see him again, but soon it wouldn't matter where Papa had gone. Soon Mama would leave me too. But Mama wasn't taken. She slowly drifted away. Like sand being pulled by the waves. I went to the beach once, when I lived on the surface and that's what it felt like. Little bits of Mama were pulled away and then she was gone. Everything was glowing and beautiful for her…everything but me.

Taking care of me was work and she didn't like work anymore. I tried not to be annoying to Mama. I tried to be fun, like what she wanted but everything I did was too much work for Mama. It was too much effort to feed me, to look after me, to look at me. She just stopped caring about me. I was just something else that took her away from her fun, like Papa had been. Soon she stopped coming home. Mama said 'Papa was one of God's spies, but now we're free. God can't see here, and now there's no spy. We're free!' Mama said it, but she didn't look free.

Papa was gone, disappeared. Mama was having too much fun. I was alone. I was alone before it all went wrong, but I knew I couldn't get taken to the orphanage. I don't know how I knew but I knew I couldn't go to an orphanage. I still should have had my parents and something didn't feel right about those places. I saw more and more children go in but when I saw them again they were not the same. So I hid. It's a big city and I was one small child. No one noticed me. I was able to go anywhere that I dared. I learned how to find food and take care of myself. I found out how to get into the vents and get around the city. The vents were secret and they went all over the city. I knew I would be safe in there, just keep moving and keep out of sight.

Crawling through the vents. That's how I found Papa. He was alive. He was a prisoner. They still kept prisoners before the days had gotten dark and the people started to twist.

By the time I found him, the guards had long forgotten him, abandoning their jobs, to go have fun. They had blocked the door from the outside before they had left. The ice holding the door was too thick to be moved, and the cold had seeped into the cell. The small room was freezing and empty… but for a lone prisoner.

He was sick. I heard him coughing from the vent I was crawling through. No one was sick here anymore - not in the way people were **supposed** to be sick, anyway. I knew it couldn't be one of the citizens, so I crawled to the vent opening and looked out. There was Papa. He was laying on the ground and he didn't move as I crawled to him. If he wasn't coughing so much I would have thought he was dead.

Papa was scared to see me, he thought I was another prisoner. He had a fever and he wouldn't listen to me. I knew I had to make him better before I'd be able to get him away from that place. He could hide with me but I couldn't drag him the whole way. So I had to leave him. I looked at him from the vent. I wondered if he would become like the other adults in the city. Would he become sick and twisted, too?

When I came back he screamed. Papa thought I was dead this time. He said I was an angel coming to take him to Heaven. I had to be careful as I gave him the medicine, I had stolen for him. I covered him with my blanket and gave him my food. I needed to try to make him better. I needed to know that he could get better. That he wasn't like the citizens. I would visit him every day, give him medicine and food. At first he didn't change but as the days passed he got better and he saw me for what I really was. He realized that I was real and alive. He asked me about all that had happened. I told him as best I could from when he had been taken. Mama's leaving, my hiding, the changes to the citizens, and the changes to the city. He listened and then Papa cried. I had never seen Papa cry. It scared me. What could make him cry? He told me to leave and I went. I told him that I would return. I looked at him from the vent and I knew that he was not like the citizens but I was scared of what could make him cry.

When I returned he asked more questions about the city and how I survived. 'You should be in an orphanage.' he told me. I told him that there were children disappearing from the orphanages. Then Papa was very serious, he took my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. 'Son, you are no longer a child. I am a sorry father for bringing you to this sick place- ssh son let me finish. And I am an even worse father for what I am about to ask you. Count yourself as lucky, I know you don't know how you could be lucky in this place but you're alive and more importantly you're free. You need to help those children. Go and find a safe place for them and then get them there. It isn't going to be easy, and I can't help you until I'm better, but you need to start. The city is falling apart but there must be a way out. Rescue the other children and then come back for me.'

So for several days I brought my father food and supplies as I searched for a place to hide the children. I finally found a large storage room with a lock on the door. It took me several weeks to clear out the room and bring in supplies. It was the most time I had spent outside of the vents since I had started to live on my own. I learned to hide in plain sight. I grew stronger carrying heavy supplies. I discovered more areas with supplies I had never seen. Most importantly I found out how to use weapons. I hated it but I knew that if I was going to save the other children I would have to fight for them. As I saw the growing number of dead, as I learned about killing, I finally understood why my father had apologized for sending me to save the other children. He knew I would have to leave the vents and travel amongst the citizens. I would have to be a man. I would have to take lives.

I was already growing before I had left the vents but now no one looked at me as a boy, they looked at me as a man. I had always been tall for my age and finally it was helpful. Less people bothered to notice a man than they did a child.

When I returned to my father I was not the boy he had sent out. I was a man. Ready to rescue him and the children. He was happy to see me, happy to hear of the preparations I had made, but he pushed me to rescue the children first. 'You don't need me. I'll only slow you down.' But I was not a child, I insisted. I told him that I would need his help and that I would not leave him. When he finally gave in, I packed up his blankets and what supplies were still left. I guided him back to the safe house through the vents. It was a tight fit but we made it. Together, back in our new home, we planned the rescue of the children.

My father was no longer the clean and shaven man he had been but he was still sharp. I stole uniforms for us and we pretended to be workers. He helped distract orphanage workers and I got the children into the vents. As we rescued more children we were able to get the children back faster with one child in the front, leading the others through the maze of vents. Father and I had to make our way through back, in the open. The vents were too difficult for him to crawl through and I would not risk losing my father again. I trained the children we saved and they were able to go out into the city and scavenge for supplies. We all cared for each other as we planned for our escape from the city. We were all so relieved to have each other but those early days were hard.

Most children hadn't seen an adult who was sane. They were afraid of my father and as I grew they would initially fear me as well. But we showed them that we were safe and we were there to help them. Soon enough the safe house was full and the orphanages were empty. Father and I thanked God everyday that the citizens had stopped having children. Unfortunately, the citizens were growing more and more mad, they were growing more and more violent. The citizens were killing each other and it was becoming too dangerous for us to all escape.

Life in Rapture was scary, with more and more people acquiring weapons and super powers. But that wasn't as alarming as when we started seeing the girls we had thought dead. Walking around the city.

At first it was one scavenger's stuttered tale but then more and more stories, of those girls appearing, came back to the safehouse. My father had pointed out the skewed ratio of boys to girls in the beginning but we had all resigned ourselves to mourning their deaths. Now we saw the girls… but they had been changed. They were not the girls we had known, we did not know what had happened to them until we pieced together the stories from the scavengers and found the posters. From then on no girls were allowed outside of the safehouse.

The city was growing ever darker.

Strange twisted little girls crawled in and out of the vents we didn't use. Those holes which I had never dared look into because I had been too big for them in the beginning. Now we knew what they held. Now we avoided them as much as we could. Once, when the curiosity had gotten the better of me. In a fit of hopefulness, I had peeked into the depth of one. But the glowing yellow orbs which blinked back at me cured my curiosity and strengthened my resolve. Father had been right. We had not hidden from God. This was an unholy place. And we were the only humans left in it.

Then the explosion happened.

We never truly found out what happened but the explosion on New Year's Eve changed everything. The violence was grander and the citizens more twisted. The people were more monster than human. The future became more and more grim. We huddled in the dark storage room. The last safe place in the dark city. We had to be even more careful when scavenging. We did not say it but we all knew we would never make it out of the city.

That was until now.

Children, there has been a change. Someone has come from the surface. They have been clearing away the twisted citizens. We can finally escape!

We have been planning for this day for a long time. You all know your jobs. Each of you knows what you have to do. So gather up your things and the weapons. Little children in the middle with the girls. We don't know how many citizens might still be around so everyone stay on your guard.

My father has the map and our last group of scavengers brought back news of a better route to the few working bathyspheres. It will be hard to get to them and it will be a tight fit but they will mean the ultimate freedom. The surface.

Everyone stay close! Everyone stay on guard! Let's go!"

…+…+…

Author's Notes

I fell in LOVE with the world of Rapture and the first BioShock game. It was a world that was complete enough to support many stories at once but open enough that you could fill in gaps and spaces with your own imagination. Rapture is a fan fiction writer's paradise!

I originally started this story because I was wondering about what it would have been like to be a child in Rapture. If you've read "Big Brother," my first BioShock fan fiction, you might not be surprised to have seen me take this route again. "Big Brother" is a good deal darker than "Growing Up Rapture" and I guess I may have wanted a change of pace.

Something I noticed as I played the game was that the children of the city are caught up in the struggles and violence but they are also completely ignored. There is a grim assumption that the children are mostly dead. There are girls who are turned into Little Sisters and the boys aren't really mentioned.

As I went from home to home and orphanage to orphanage in the game I wondered when I would find more children. However, that doesn't happen. Even in the end it's only a handful of girls, former Little Sisters, who are present. So what happened to all the other children?

As I worked through writing this story, I began thinking about what a child might have to do to survive in that environment. In the end I thought about what was happening while the player was saving the rest of Rapture. What if there was a happy ending for the children? What if there was another hero in the city while the player is taking down Splicers and dealing with the larger forces at work? Someone who worked in the shadows to do equally important work. Someone who gets the children out before the player gets to the end of the game. The idea being that the player never noticed what was happening but the narrator of this story was aware of him and what he was doing.

I apologize if the timing is a bit of a mess. I tried to consult timelines for the game as much as I could to make sure that everything made sense. The story starts before the player arrives on the scene and goes into the build up of the action and then ends before the player gets to the end boss.

I hope you enjoyed the story.

As always,

Thank you for reading!


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